


None So Kingly

by Re_White



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M, Mirror Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-03
Updated: 2011-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:05:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Re_White/pseuds/Re_White
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How many times will you attempt to re-create her?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	None So Kingly

Number Eighteen stands at parade rest, her blue eyes set dead ahead in polite deference and already, Captain Pike feels the familiar twinge of disappointment.

"You find me insufficient," she says, the clipped resonance of her voice level and goadful.

"Yes."

"And yet I was engineered to be perfect."

"And so you are." Pike stands, and circles her once before he stops and takes her jaw in hand, tipping her face up to the crisp light of his quarters - studies the familiar territory of her bland expression. Strikingly handsome, not beautiful. There is a harshness to the stratigraphy of her features, something too hard to truly be called fair. The Ilyrians have never troubled themselves as slaves to aesthetics. A small pique of temperament on their part, but something to appreciate. Pike has always enjoyed Number One's minor deviations.

"You _are_ perfect," he tells her, because it's true. Her genes are exquisite.

He tightens his grip, the pads of his fingertips digging into the pale warmth of her skin, until he can feel the hard resilience of bone. He knows exactly how much she can take, what will bruise her, and what will break. There's no thrill of discovery in the red facts of her body, no surprises in her neat, expertly designed biology.

Mapping Number One's genetic structure and stripping it of all its secrets was one of the first things he did.

"Perfect," he murmurs into the delicate shell of her ear, "but wrong."

Number Eighteen shifts her head to face him, as much as she is able to under the biting pressure of his fingers. It's a promising gesture. None of the others have ever bothered to try to look him in the eye.

"How many times will you attempt to re-create her?"

"As many times as it takes."

"Repetition will not produce variation, Captain."

When he drops his hand from her jaw he raises the other, the tip of the phaser jutting into the softness of her belly. Number Eighteen does not flinch or pull away. Her cheeks redden slightly and her pupils dilate - stress responses she didn't exhibit when he did this to her the first time - but she stands her ground.

Pike already knows what she's going to say, but he asks the question anyway.

"Tell me, would you take the Empire for yourself?"

"No," the steadiness of her voice is to her credit and maybe it would have been enough for him the second or even the third time, but Pike is too hungry to settle for compromise now.

"I am loyal to the Empire -"

The shot of the phaser summons his yeomen, a handsome young thing with blond hair and brown, killer eyes, but Pike waves Kirk away with a dismissive hand. He wants her there, crumpled on the floor like a decorative accent when he takes his next meeting with the genetics team.

*

He still sees her some times. Too often for his state of mind and perhaps not as often as he'd like, but he sees her; Number One. The _real_ Number One, her pale flesh flickering at the edge of his vision like phantom light. It's erratic, nothing he can count on, just random flinches of memory, the brief flash of her bare knuckles here, the dark smudge of her eyelashes and the hard, handsome curve of her jaw, there.

She drives him to distraction dead, as much as she ever did alive.

*

This is what they lack:

Her daring. Her dry, unimpressed willingness to defy him at her own discretion. Pike cannot breed recklessness into them and they cannot be taught.

They do not carry the things she did. The spiderweb of scars across her back, the constellation of silver-pink pinpricks peppering her left hip. Grim, essential little realities of the weight she and Pike bore together, the wounds she took for him, and the things they shared in the dark.

When numbers Two through Eighteen slid from the bio tank and oozed into the world, they did so naked, wet and perfect, blank and slick with error, a newness with no name.

*

 _The day Captain Pike meets Number One she neatly and efficiently breaks the neck of one of his more handsy crewmen. It interests him enough to grant her an interview._

 _"Why do they call you number one?"_

 _"Because I am perfect."_

 _The expression on her face doesn't change, but he finds himself smiling back at her anyway, as if they were sharing a joke, even as he presses the phaser to her stomach, the lip of the gun wrinkling the crisp line of her uniform._

 _"Would you take the Empire for yourself?"_

 _She gives the phaser one brief, nonplussed look before raising her chin to him, cool and proud. "You have not asked the right question, Captain."_

 _"And that is?"_

 _She taps the silver barrel of the phaser with the tip of one dark blue nail, and then closes her hand around his, her small steely fingers tightening around the trigger._

 _"If I take the Empire, to whom will I give it?"_

*

Number Nineteen stands at parade rest.


End file.
